Keller @ Large: Adult Foster Care Needs Support

BOSTON (CBS) - I got an e-mail yesterday that broke my heart, from a woman who lives with her husband, a young daughter, and her 80-year-old mother who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

She writes: "When my mother needs to get up during the night, I am the one who gets up with her. I am the one she calls for and I am the one that gives her a hug and kiss when she cries because she is scared and confused. I am a caregiver for my Mom because I want to be, so she can live in our home where not only she is the most comfortable and happy but as is the rest of the family."

For the last 18 months or so she has been helped by the professionals in the adult foster care program who provide support and counsel for families like hers.

"I provide both physical and emotional care for her on a 24/7 basis: 168 hrs a week, I am her 'nurse', her 'physical therapist', her 'home health aide', her 'cook' and her 'companion'- all rolled up into one package and at a bargain price."

There is an alternative, of course.

When this woman had to put her mother in a short-term nursing care facility for two months of rehab, it cost the state over $15,000, she says, and the mother regressed emotionally while she was there.

In conclusion, she writes: "The cost for the Adult Foster Care program is less than half of the cost of a nursing home. It does not make sense why Massachusetts would decrease support for this program."

No, it doesn't.

In fact. there are plenty of bureaucrats whose jobs ought to be cut way before they even think of cutting a basic human service like this.

But the way some of our politicians think, that's the way it goes, that's what we get for not paying more taxes, we'll show them.

A government that can't find the money to help a family like this, along with the disabled toddlers in another program facing cuts right now, is a flat-out disgrace.

My correspondent will tell her story to a legislative committee later today. Heaven help them if they don't listen, and act.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.