I agree with the comments AND the tone of the ARC of Northern Virginia.    The people who are making these rules need to walk a week or a month in our shoes.    we do not want sympathy, a pat on the back and telling us you understand, we need empathy, we want HELP form someone who has lived this and truly understand the plight we are in,

  I am an accountant by trade.   These changes proposed smell as they are coming from accountants who are trying to make the inputs work (random 56 hour cap), when they are trying to get to an answer they were told to get to, a funding cut or any predetermined spending total.   I envision building this spreadsheet myself

when you have a dependent who is both physically and mentally handicapped and needs either all waking hour support or 24/7 support just putting in a variable into a spreadsheet to get to the desired funding is not the appropriate way to do this.

we parents have to work and make so much more money to pay for all the hours that are needed and not already covered, as what is already supplied is not enough and you proposing more cuts makes this 57 yr old father tear up in frustration and exhaustion,  it is not like we are sitting around when the aides are helping, we are working extra to fund the hours that are already not covered.

these changes are putting more strain on parents that are doing their best to take care of things.   don't hurt all of us with a systematic change or trying to AI everything in the computer world for us who are living in real life.

do not strip down the system so much that regional centers and non community based housing will be needed again as it just becomes too hard for us parents as we get older.    get us accountants OUT of the decision making on this.

also please stop trying to automate everything as our children, our dependents and ourselves are individual and not call all fit into an algorithm.    yes I want the computer programmers our of our lives too.   computers do not have empathy, and we need empathy, not math and computer programming.

sincerely,

Michael Montante

mmont43@aol.com