Indiana homeless shelters: an option for severely disabled?

An AP article reports that parents of severely disabled children and adults in Indiana have been told to drop their family members off at homeless shelters, if they can no longer care for their children at home.

As it turns out, this is not an official state policy and there are no confirmed cases of parents actually following through with that suggestion. It appears it was more of a threat by frustrated employees of Indiana social service agencies to get parents to back off from their complaining about the unavailability of Medicaid waivers that could pay for services at home.

The real scandal is this:

• 20,000 people are on waiting lists with some people waiting 10 years for services.
• Governor Mitch Daniel ordered budget cuts that eliminated 2,000 Medicaid waiver slots since July.
• Foster children with disabilities have been moved to a less costly program that doesn't provide services for special needs and they had a food benefit taken away.

Almost everyone agrees that we should help the "truly needy", but doing it and paying for it are something else altogether.