At 21 and left with no one to care for her, Haylee Cain had no choice but to move into a nursing home. Two months and a newspaper article later, Cain who has cerebral palsy is getting a new lease on life.
Cain entered a nursing home when her grandfather could no longer provide the 24-hour care she needed. After a story was published about Cain in the Florence, Ala. newspaper, she reconnected with Donna and Judson Emens who knew Cain as a child. Soon enough, the Emens decided to bring her into their home.
Without the Emens, Cain’s prospects were not good. There is little infrastructure in Alabama to care for those like Cain who are physically limited, but mentally capable. To be eligible for a slot in a group home, she would need an IQ score below 70. Barring that, Cain likely would have spent most of her life in a nursing home.
Cain says the institutional lifestyle at the nursing facility left her feeling depressed and hopeless after just two months.
Now, Cain is right at home with the Emens, who say they would like to adopt her, reports the (Florence, Ala.) TimesDaily. To read more click here.
I know that Alabama is way backwards, but this woman should have a Medicaid waiver so the state would pay someone, even the family that has taken her in, to care for her. Sounds like a special education department dropped the ball on the transition planning or she would have been signed up by the age of 10 so that she would be receiving services by now. The problem with nursing homes is that they exist and are the easist cop-out for a conservative society that no longer considers being your brother’s brother a priority or even the right thing to do. Like abortion, nursing home placement should be rare, extremely rare, and limited to those with such severe dementia that they don’t know where they are.
God will bless the couple who took her in. I am sad for the hundreds or thousands of others with developmental disabilities, retarded or not who are confined to those prisons for the unwanted. This needs to happen a lot more often. Adult foster care is also being tried with the VA and is often a viable option.