Monthly Archives: November 2010

I Miss Her Always Now

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Two days after she died I received a package from her in the mail.  In it was a St. Christopher’s Medal. Inscribed on the back were the words:

Peter

I will always be in your heart

Love

Mom

Her name was Leona Patricia Clark and she gave birth to me on October 2, 1953 in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. She was a single 20-year-old Catholic girl from Bridgeport, Connecticut. She had not been dealt an easy hand in life. Her mother died when she was three and a few weeks later, her father, an alcoholic, left the house early one morning and never returned, leaving my mother and her 12-year-old brother Frank on their own. Summoning up strength-of-spirit from God knows where, Frank put my mother on the back of his bicycle and peddled some 20 miles or so to an aunt and uncle’s house. There they were raised.

Seven days after I was born and against all her sweet heart wanted, my mother surrendered me for adoption.

We would not see each other again for nearly 34 years years. Not until I found her and we were reunited  on January 8, 1987 in Stamford Connecticut. Over the years I would learn what I’d always known to be true; my mother was my emotional and spiritual familiar. She was my beginning, my heart and soul, the light that got me through my days of homelessness, the deep heart spiritual soil from which I was formed.  There was, we both knew before and after we were reunited, a connection  so deep and powerful between us it was a universe unto itself, untouchable and unfathomable by any but the two of us.

Now, when life strikes hard as it did today when the home we’d thought was ours fell from our grasp, I think of my mother and the tears flow and she is with me still and I miss her always now.

Me & Mom 10-2-2000 a

NY DOH Wounds Rights of Brain Injured

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Reliable sources say the New York State Department of Health has told TBI waiver staff that they must side with the DOH and against their clients when their clients appeal decisions made by the DOH in a Medicaid Fair Hearing.

A Fair Hearing affords people the chance to contest a DOH decision. As regular readers of this blog know, the DOH recently denied this writer’s request for white noise machines and a life alert.

Sources say the DOH Legal Department claims companies and individuals approved to provide waiver services are under contract with the state and therefore it would be a conflict of interest if they were to side with the brain injury survivors, the very people they are supposed to serve. Asked what options waiver staff have if they disagree with the DOH’s decision, sources say waiver staff can help survivors find community advocates to appear with them at the hearing.

The denial of my request came in the form of a letter from the Capitol Region’s Regional Resource Development Center (RRDC).

RRDCs are contract employees of the DOH who oversee those who provide and receive Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver services in their region. The TBI Waiver is an array of services that helps brain injury survivors live in the community. TBI Waiver Providers are companies and individuals who provide these services. Service Coordinators are providers who act as case managers and work with waiver participants in identifying  the services and developing the treatment plans that best serves waiver participants. Essentially, the Service Coordinator is the quarterback of the treatment team that works with and for the participant.

This legal directive was, according to sources, presented to RRDCs across the state in monthly conference calls facilitated by DOH employee Beth Gnozzio. Ms. Gnozzio has developed a reputation on several fronts for not responding to emails or phone calls.

The directive itself appears to violate the DOH’s TBI Waiver manual which reads, in part, that waiver participants must “Receive support and direction from the Service Coordinator to resolve (their) concerns and complaints about services and service providers” The directive’s rather apparent conflict with the manual does not stop there. The  TBI Waiver manual  says (bold is mine): “An individual has the right to seek a Medicaid Fair Hearing for many reasons including issues related to the …TBI waiver”. The manual also says brain injury survivors will “Have your service providers (to) help protect and promote your ability to exercise all your rights; identified in this document”, the document being the manual itself.

How on earth service providers, comprised of service coordinators and, for that matter, all waiver staff, can help protect and promote the survivors ability to exercise their rights, one of which is the right to a fair hearing, while at the same time they are being told they must stand against the survivors in a fair hearing is beyond me.