I sent the following email to Judy Martin at Hampton Manor. For a few days she seemed to be very caring and interested in helping, and then she simply completely stopped responding to phone calls or emails.
Dear Judy,
Thank you for the information and for continuing to help me help my mother.
I spoke with a woman named Linda at C.A.R.E.S. using the (386) 238-4946 number you gave me, who said that — despite what I have been told by her care manager at Stewart-Marchman ACT — my mother is not, in fact, on any waiting list as far as she can tell.
Linda said that she would do her best to get my mom on the waiting list at the Department of Elder Affairs (which is the same thing as C.A.R.E.S. as far as I can tell) but that I also needed to contact “ElderSource” to have her put on the waiting list for an “assisted living waiver” there.
I’m not really clear on the difference between these two government organizations, but I called the “elder help line” at (888) 242-4464 and talked to a woman there named Deborah. Deborah told me also that my mother is not on any waiting list as far as she can tell.
Deborah said that she can’t put my mother on a waiting list until an “assessment” is done, and that is handled by C.A.R.E.S., and that this situation didn’t make any sense to her because my mother doesn’t have a physical address right now because she’s at Stewart-Marchman ACT, and I needed to call C.A.R.E.S. to get the ball rolling. Deborah also said that her manager is out of the office today, which makes it more difficult for her to get anything done.
I called Linda at C.A.R.E.S. again — which was complicated because they do not provide their last names and there are three different women named Linda working today — and she said that Deborah was incorrect and that she was going to email a woman named Helen, who is Deborah’s manager’s superior and that I didn’t need to do anything else, they would call me as soon as they could to let me know what the next step is.
Both Linda and Deborah, though, said that it could be “months” before any additional resources are released by the State of Florida for them to distribute to the individuals on their many waiting lists, and that there is no guarantee that my mother will be “high enough” on either of the two lists to enable her to receive any funds.
Right now I am scared to death and beside myself with worry. This is all very confusing and inefficient, sadly. My mother has already been institutionalized at the Pinegrove/CSU Stewart-Marchman ACT facility for almost two months now, and that facility supposedly normally only holds individuals for three or four days. They are desperate to discharge her because they tell me their administrators are concerned about how long she has been there, and I fear that — in addition to keeping her overly sedated constantly and not in any way providing any therapeutic or rehabilitative care — they are going to attempt to discharge her to what I feel is an unacceptable assisted living facility before I can manage to find someplace better — like your Hampton Manor facility — for her.
I am going to send an email right now to Sophia X. Mas, her care manager at Stewart-Marchman ACT. Sophia has told me repeatedly that she herself placed my mother on the waiting list at C.A.R.E.S. back in December, but that appears to not be the case. I am going to BCC (blind carbon copy) you on the email so you will know what I’m discussing with her. I’m sending you the email as a BCC because previously you indicated that I shouldn’t let anyone at Stewart-Marchman ACT know that you are going to visit my mother.
My mother’s information:
Kathleen (Kathie) Gagne
DOB: [dob]
SS#: [social security number]Again, thank you for all your help with this,
Sincerely,
David Vincent Gagne