It is another sleepy Saturday evening at this Wheaton nursing home.
Then the fiery woman in the red dress rolls off the MetroAccess bus in her electric wheelchair.
Sherry Haynes, who has diabetes and lupus and has difficulty walking, has been waiting more than a year to leave the nursing home where she lives.
(Michael Lutzky -- The Washington Post)
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She has a spiral notebook in her lap and passion in her voice. She's quadriplegic.
She's Ellen Archie, 37. She used to live here. Now she's back, helping other people get out.
"They can't stop you from having a life outside of here," Archie tells her old neighbors, who encircle her with their wheelchairs in the courtyard.
Archie is one of a devoted network of outreach workers -- some paid, some volunteer -- who go into nursing homes, whether they are welcome or not, and tell residents about their rights under federal law to live with as much freedom as they desire and can safely handle.
It has been three years since Maryland began providing waivers that allow nursing home residents ages 18 to 59 to opt for care in their own homes, provided they can acquire the home health services they need at the same price or less than it costs them to live in an institution.
For years, many disabled people have been propelled into nursing homes simply because Medicaid has paid for a bed there but not for the comparatively modest costs of home health care. But federal laws and court rulings -- and the staggering costs for states -- have laid the groundwork for providing more options for the disabled who want to live in the community.
"We don't have dementia, we don't have Alzheimer's. We have our minds," Archie tells her listeners. "It's mind over matter."
"Mind over matter, that works sometimes," muses her old friend Sherry Haynes, 54, who misses Archie. She used to straighten Archie's dresser drawers and keep her company before Archie got a Medicaid waiver and a rental assistance voucher and moved into her own apartment in Silver Spring.
Haynes, who has diabetes and lupus and has difficulty walking, wants to move out, too. It has been a year since Archie left, and Haynes is still waiting for housing.
"Ellen, I need another form, the green form for the waiver," Haynes says. "I need to fill it out if you don't mind, sweetie."
"I'll get it out to you Monday," Archie promises.
Her campaign, and that of other outreach workers, is not aimed at nursing homes that abuse residents or at patients who cannot function without the intensive services there.
