Susan Senator

To my readers:  please feel free to take this letter, copy it, and personalize it with your own thoughts and situations.  Here is a form to email the Governor.  Folks, this is the way to take responsibility for your children’s futures; one email at a time.  You gotta start somewhere!  Thanks for taking this on! –Susan

Dear Governor Patrick,
I have met you a couple of times, at various events and the EOHHS Summit last year.  I am the mom of a 21 year old young man with severe autism (Nat), and the author of 2 autism parenting books. I gave you a copy of one of them at the UMass Summit.

Governor Patrick, I am a huge fan of yours.  I worked for your reelection through my blog (20,000 hits a month) and other networks. I know you believe in helping our most vulnerable citizens, like my son.  So today I am asking you not to allow the proposed cuts to Medicaid that would affect Adult Foster Care and DayHabs.  You must know how terrible the consequences would be if this were to happen.  DDS has already endured cuts in Residential Funding over the last few years, making it extremely difficult for even those eligible for DDS to get 24/7 Res. funding.  Many who don’t quite qualify opt for AFC, piecemeal though the care may be.  Many of these are grateful for the DayHabs offered, for without them they would sit home doing nothing, if they are lucky enough to have homes.  My son is lucky that way, to have both parents healthy and young enough to care for him, and yet as lovely as he is, sometimes in the past his frustrations with this complicated world have made him lash out at us.  This can be scary and dangerous to him and to us.  Nat is not unlike many others on the autism spectrum, who work so hard at connecting and being understood (contrary to the stereotype that they are uncaring of others’ states of minds).  But sometimes he just cannot hold it together.  He is human, after all.

I tell you this to remind you that the Developmentally Disabled *need* the Medicaid supports — many because there have been so many cuts in other departments!  The MassHealth programs have been their lifelines.  Please don’t allow them to be cut.