I want to thank Jeff Sanders for his Jan. 15 op-ed, “Failure to invest in residential facilities leaves Mainers with nowhere to go.” It’s important for the public, particularly our legislators, to understand that the system of care for all vulnerable Mainers is collapsing.

My personal experience is with diminishing support for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. My daughter is 26 and still lives with me and her father, as she languishes on the waitlist for supported housing that would allow her to live a more independent, dignified life.

To reduce the waitlist, the state is leaning heavily on shared living, a form of adult foster care whereby people are paid a stipend to take adults with disabilities into their home and care for them. The problem is that the majority of shared living providers in Maine are the disabled adult’s own parents.

That helps to alleviate the critical loss of income that often accompanies the need to care for an adult family member with disabilities, but it fails to answer the devastating question of what happens when those parents die. It does nothing to rebuild Maine’s once-robust system of community-based services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It only delays the inevitable for a few more years, and forces our adult children into crisis when we become too old to care for them, or we simply die.

If Mr. Sanders thinks the situation is dire now, he should wait a few years. Unless the state steps up, it will only get worse.

Lisa Wesel
Bowdoinham

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