The author of the author. With the kind assistance of Sarah Baker Pendleton
Now that the Senate has accepted its budget bill, the Chamber has voted this week, taking away my ability to engage in medically complex foster children. This is not called, of course, but when this legislation takes $ 930 billion from Medicaid, it will hit the foster children who are waiting for the families.
Four of 10 children in the United States are on Medicaid, including 368,000 foster children such as MINE, who are entitled to Medicaid benefits through the reception system. All of these children will be harmful as a result of these abbreviations, but for those in the reception system, this can make the difference between finding a forever home or growing up in institutional care.
My husband Nick and I have encouraged about 30 children in the last 14 years. We know how basic the benefits of Medicaid are for children in the foster system, Almost half of which have special health needsS All children in the reception system are entitled to Medicaid benefits, and for many, this compensation is expanded after receiving or aging outside the system to ensure continuous health and safety.
Medicaid has saved the life of any foster child that has passed through my doors, and it is possible to encourage first – and adopt some of these foster children, continuing the benefits that guarantee that we will be able to meet their current medical needs. Medicaid cuts would be detrimental to medically complex foster children like mine in the United States.
I know this very intimately because of Ansley, my lovely girl who loved the color yellow, balloons and listened to music. Ansley came to us as a foster baby with complex medical problems. We later adopted her and remained her loving family until her death in 2019 at the age of 5. Ansley brought so much love and joy to our family during his short time with us and activated my “intercessive bone”, turned me into a defender of medically complex children in the foster system and gave me inspiration to continue to encourage children like her.
The author with one of the medical complex children she cared for. With the kind assistance of Sarah Baker Pendleton
Because of Ansley, I am a person who sees people as valuable, no matter who they are. Because of Medicaid, I am able to open my home for children like Ansley, who would otherwise be too expensive for us and most families to care.
Ansley was not a burden because the love of a child is never a burden, but throughout her life she had complex medical needs. Medicaid’s coverage of the necessary treatments and therapies also released resources for us to provide her with improved opportunities, paying for the additional services she needed to thrive and live her best life with us.
Medicaid provides basic support that helps medically complex foster children such as Mine to lead a full life at home in their communities, where they know the love and communion and enrich the lives of everyone they touch. Our daughter Lucy, a micro -prophemy, born at only 27 weeks, also came to us through the reception system and fights behavior and emotional regulation. She receives Medicaid coverage after acquisition to support her critical mental health needs, which will require lifelong management assistance.
Our youth girl, Lila, also a micro -press that started in the reception system, was born at 22 weeks and survived because of Medicaid. Medicaid made it possible to bring her home with us, gain access to oxygen at home and get the operations and other care she needed to thrive.
The members of the microphamingy support groups often tell me that without Medicaid they would be bankrupt or financially ruined; No one expects premature birth, and Nicu remains to cost millions of dollars, with medically complex premiums experiencing high health care needs.
The five -year -old Z, which was recently adopted after four years in our home, has vision and vision disabilities, has spastic quadriplegia, uses a nutrition tube and lives with effects that change life from traumatic brain damage. He has used a great deal of Medicaid’s coverage of his equipment, such as Tobii Dynavox Eye’s eye machine, which allows him to communicate directly with us when he is not feeling well, which toy he wants to play and what music he wants to play.
He was able to introduce himself to us and gain access to the community in a way that is simply unreal. He can go to school with his peers and communicate with his teachers, understand and respond to what they teach. This would be unthinkable without the critical equipment that we could never afford ourselves. The provision of Z with the tools it has to communicate, open its whole world and ours.
Every child deserves this type of access, and Medicaid does this possible, allowing foster children with medical complexities and disabilities to find families forever, instead of falling into institutional care, be it the hospital, public establishments or nursing homes.
Without it, I could not afford to take care of my foster children, and the children I have mastered through the foster system would also lose the coverage that keeps them at home, safe and loved, in their community. They could be forced to be institutions because of their medical needs, as with several children we already know, awaiting adoptive parents at state establishments.
Medicaid is also crucial to family reunification, the most important goal within the reception system where possible. We had medically complex reception areas that managed to reunite with family members because of Medicaid; These family members were able to take these children because they knew that their medical needs would be covered. They were able to remove these children from the foster system and raise them.
It would be a heartbreaking position of kinship to hesitate due to financial problems.
As a foster mother, my calling is to take care of medically complex children. I do not believe that the cruel abbreviations of Medicaid in this bill are what Jesus means when he said, “Let young children come to me” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We are taught to take care of the sick of this world, especially children.
I pray that when my time on this land is over, I will reunite with my daughter Ansley. In the meantime, I will guarantee that her inheritance lives in the form of providing comfort, love and shelter for children, just like her. I cannot imagine having to close our home because of our inability to afford the health expenses for an incurably sick or disabled person in need of a family.
Disabled and medically complex children are already sufficiently suffering. Even a child is denied access to home support and the community is one child too much.
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