C&C States
Self-Direction Handbook
Data &Scott Ross
Scott Ross was a 42-year-old single man who was unable to work due to his physical disabilities. Diabetes caused him to go blind and have his left leg amputated. He had undergone a liver transplant and heart disease had weakened him. Daily functioning had become difficult. Despite his debilitating illnesses, Scott lived alone in subsidized housing in Little Rock, Arkansas and was determined to remain independent.
Scott was deeply dissatisfied with the personal care services he received through traditional Medicaid arrangements. As a blind man, he felt particularly vulnerable when dealing with the workers sent to him by the homecare agency. He complained to the agency that aides - who were strangers to him - often ignored his needs. He explained that the aides were telling him that they had finished a task he requested, only to find out later that the job had not been done. He also complained that aides sometimes stole food and belongings from him. When Scott got along well with a particular aide, there was no guarantee that the same aide would be available to him on a regular basis because of high job turnover and a short-staffed agency.
Not surprisingly, Scott was one of the first participants to register for the Cash & Counseling program when it was implemented in Arkansas. He quickly began using his $394 monthly cash allowance to hire trusted friends to help him at home with cleaning, shopping, paying bills and managing his bank accounts, and traveling to his doctor visits. He also saved part of his allowance each month so that he could buy several items, including a bed - he had been sleeping on the floor - and a washing machine, so he would no longer have to go to the laundry room in his housing complex, where he often found machines out-of-order and was the target of abuse by neighborhood kids.
Unfortunately, Scott passed away last year during heart surgery, but he was always willing to tell people how Cash & Counseling changed his life. He once said, "I feel a lot more comfortable with my friends helping me out. It's not good sense for a blind man to hand his keys over to someone he doesn't know. And now I can be sure that the things I need to have done are really getting done."