Two Facebook Posts, One Day, Same Michigan Group

I want to show you two posts from a Michigan parent group, both from the same day, because together they say something neither says alone.

The first asked a simple question: "For families with kids who need higher support, what barriers have you run into when trying to access community programs?" The top reply, from a parent named Ashley: "That there aren't any that take children with higher support/behavioral needs. Most places do not want the liability."

Sit with that word for a second. Liability. It sounds like a real constraint — insurance, risk, legal exposure. And sometimes it is. But notice what it actually describes here: not a lack of desire to include a child, but an absence of the staffing, training, and structure that would make inclusion safe and sustainable. "Liability" isn't the problem. It's the word an organization reaches for instead of saying "we never built the infrastructure this requires."

The second post, from an anonymous member of the same group: "Has anyone found community programs that offer reliable 1:1 support for kids who need it? What has worked for your family?" The two answers given both named the same thing: CLS — Community Living Supports, a Medicaid waiver program.

Read those two answers again. Neither one named a community program. Both routed straight past "community programming" entirely and into the Medicaid system — a different kind of infrastructure altogether, built for an entirely different purpose. Families asking where to find reliable 1:1 support in ordinary community life are being answered with the name of a government waiver, because nothing else exists to point to.

This is what happens when discoverability fails. Families aren't finding help through a directory, a school counselor, or a community organization's own outreach. They're finding it through each other, on Facebook, one thread at a time — decoding, in real time, a maze that should have had a map.

Neither of these families knew the other had posted that same day. I only saw them side by side because I happened to be looking. That should not be how a family learns whether help exists.