密歇根新闻广播 含辛茹苦的妈妈

Parents of children with severe autism in Michigan have limited options when it comes to finding long-term care for their kids.

Securing reliable in-home care is often a challenge, and the state's residential¹ mental health care facilities often lack the resources necessary to accommodate patients with extremely aggressive or violent behaviors.

For Cyndi Sibley, finding care for her daughter required driving across the country to a facility in Maryland.

Jackie, Sibley's 19-year-old daughter, has a severe form of autism that requires constant care. Sibley says when Jackie reached adolescence², she began to display dangerously aggressive, self-injurious behaviors. Keeping Jackie safe has become an increasingly difficult, costly³ challenge.

Jackie received a state Medicaid waiver for in-home help when she was around four years old. But Sibley says the family struggled to find the long-term care her daughter so desperately⁴ needed.

It's very hard to find staff, especially when there are challenging behaviors involved. Most of the people that we had helping⁵ us would quit, Sibley said.

After exhausting her options in Michigan, Sibley found the Kennedy Krieger Center in Maryland, a residential facility that specializes in treating severely⁶ autistic children. After a year on the waiting list, Jackie was admitted in March 2018. Sibley says that her daughter has received phenomenal care there.

Kennedy Krieger is typically just a three-to-six-month program. Healthcare providers there, knowing there were few options for Jackie back home in Michigan, extended her stay to over a year.

That extended stay has been costly for Sibley's family. The state of Michigan now considers Jackie to be a resident of Maryland. That means she's ineligible⁷ for the Medicaid waiver she's had since she was a young girl. Sibley's private insurance stopped covering Jackie's treatment at Kennedy Krieger which costs 127,000 dollars a month in August.

No one's been paying the bill since then.

Sibley says Michigan needs to do more to provide the care that young people like her daughter need. After years of dealing⁸ with Michigan's mental health system, she has this advice for the state:

Michigan needs to look at having some kind of facility, I think every state does, so that they can house these children that are not just on the spectrum⁹, but severe cases.

Meanwhile, Sibley and her family continue to search for a long-term solution. They've even considered moving out of state, and away from their family, to get Jackie the care she needs.

1 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

2 adolescence   

n.青春期，青少年

参考例句：

• Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。
• The film is about the trials and tribulations of adolescence.这部电影讲述了青春期的麻烦和苦恼。

3 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

4 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

5 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

6 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

7 ineligible   

adj.无资格的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The new rules have made thousands more people ineligible for legal aid.新规定使另外数千人不符合接受法律援助的资格。
• The country had been declared ineligible for World Bank lending.这个国家已被宣布没有资格获得世界银行的贷款。

8 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

9 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。