Lucila spent most of her life as a businesswoman in the Philippines — resourceful, independent, well-traveled. Her daughter Hershey describes her with pride. “She did well in small business. She provided well for me.” By the time Lucila arrived in Seattle in 2024, everything had changed. She had survived abuse at the hands of a husband who later abandoned her. At 78, she was hospitalized with serious cognitive and physical impairments — vascular dementia, chronic kidney disease, diabetes. When her hospital stay ended, she needed a place that could provide real, ongoing care.
Hershey found an Adult Family Home that could meet her mother’s needs. She had a Durable Power of Attorney authorizing her to act on Lucila’s behalf. And the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) had agreed to conduct the functional assessment that would establish her mother’s Medicaid eligibility — the final step before placement.
Agency Backtracking
Then DSHS reversed course. They refused to honor the DPOA, claiming the document wasn’t specific enough. They told Hershey she needed legal guardianship — a process that takes months and costs thousands of dollars. The hospital, meanwhile, was pushing hard for discharge.
“I provided everything they asked, and even then, they wouldn’t accept it,” Hershey said. “The law is there. The problem is the system.”
It was an impossible situation: Hershey couldn’t care for her mother; she had to find work and was still recovering from a prior work injury. DSHS wouldn’t act, and the hospital wanted her mother out in three days.
Hershey sent a formal objection to the hospital’s discharge plan: “I want to clearly state that discharging my mother without safe placement, caregiver support, or completed DSHS assessment would constitute an unsafe discharge,” Hershey wrote. She was not going to be steamrolled. But they didn’t budge.
NJP Steps In
That’s when a friend referred her to Northwest Justice Project and she talked to attorney Elizabeth Landry. Elizabeth reviewed the DPOA, determined that it expressly gave Hershey authority to facilitate her mom’s discharge from the hospital to an Adult Family Home, and e-mailed the DSHS program manager the same day — explaining in precise terms why the DPOA was legally sufficient and sending a complete copy of it.
DSHS reversed course immediately and approved the functional assessment.
“Elizabeth was a lawyer, so they had to listen,” Hershey says.
The assessment established Lucila’s Medicaid eligibility, enabling her to move into the Adult Family Home.
“I was relieved — over the moon,” Hershey said. “Everything, everything came into place because of her. My attorney made everything possible.”
“We need lawyers. We need this organization,” she adds. “A lot of people are not capable of paying huge amounts to lawyers. There’s NJP to help them, to fight for them.”