PAWTUCKET — The bingo games, movie screenings and exercise classes that are standard fare at senior centers can all be found at Leon Mathieu Senior Center.

Hundreds of people over 62 gather there every weekday to socialize and take their midday meal.

But it’s the things that go on behind the scenes in the red-brick building on Main Street that are at the heart of its mission –– the casework and referrals that help keep the elderly out of nursing homes by enabling them to live on their own.

And it’s those things that are in jeopardy, the city’s director of senior services, Joan A. Crawley, said, as a result of Governor Carcieri’s proposed budget cuts.

“Part of our mission is to help seniors navigate the complex array of services that are offered so that they’re able to live in the community as long as possible,” Crawley said in an interview yesterday.

That part of the center’s mission will become difficult, if not impossible, Crawley said, if the Department of Elderly Affairs eliminates the 19 community information specialists who provide seniors throughout Rhode Island with guidance about resources and benefits, and if state grants to senior centers are cut 50 percent.

Crawley said it makes little sense for Carcieri, who is seeking to reduce state Medicaid spending, to cut appropriations to senior centers whose mission is to keep seniors out of Medicaid-reimbursed nursing homes.

“Our governor’s going to deinstitutionalize the nursing homes,” she said. “And I don’t know where he’s going to put them when he’s cutting every program that we have.”

The governor’s spokesman, Jeff Neal, didn’t deny that the proposed cuts to senior centers involve tough choices, and that the impact would be painful.

But he said difficult decisions have to be made to deal with the worst state budget deficit since the credit union crisis. And he sought to counter Crawley’s arguments that the proposed cuts would work at cross purposes with the governor’s plans for Medicaid reform.

When Carcieri talks about reducing Medicaid spending by $66.7 million, Neal said, he is talking about diverting people into programs, such as home health care and adult daycare, which make it possible for them to stay out of nursing homes.

Those programs, though financed by Medicaid, are less costly than nursing homes, and different from the system of legislative grants that provide senior citizen centers with partial support.

“There is no doubt that senior centers provide a very valuable service,” Neal said. “But it’s very different from the services that we are talking about under Medicaid reform.”

The Leon Mathieu Senior Center has a $407,000 budget and a staff of nine people. If legislative grants to senior centers are cut 50 percent and the position of community information specialist is eliminated, the center will have to absorb a loss of $55,900. “That’s a huge amount of money for us,” Crawley said.

Last year, 5,500 people were provided with assistance, Crawley said, including 2,012 who came into the center and 61 who were seen at their homes.

When an earlier round of state budget cuts forced the center to let its go of its caseworker, Lillian Golotto, Crawley began making home visits herself.

Crawley is called in when the police discover evidence of neglect or abuse, or when the city’s animal control officer uncovers a case of cat hoarding.

She responds to the calls even though, at 69, she is nearing retirement herself.

jcastell@projo.com