Aid program for disabled Arkansans that took priority for Hutchinson languishes under Sanders - Arkansas Times
A waitlist for getting help to disabled individuals keeps growing under Gov. Sarah Sanders, who, so far, has resisted requests to hold a special legislative session to address the matter.
arktimes.com · Byron Tate · September 8, 2026
One might think a state whose leaders tout a $655 million surplus could and would snap its collective fingers and find $50 million to clear a years-long waitlist for a program that helps those with severe mental and physical disabilities.
But when that state is Arkansas, currently run by Gov. Sarah Sanders, it’s those long-suffering families who may soon snap.
The program run by the Department of Human Services has an unassuming name: the Community and Employment Support Waiver. But if a family is lucky enough to get a loved one into it, sometimes after waiting for as long as 10 years, CES can provide services that aren’t picked up by Medicaid that might allow recipients to live independently instead of being relegated to a nursing home or care facility.
The program was a priority for Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson in 2021, when he ponied up the more than $37 million necessary to zero out a waitlist of more than 3,200 disabled individuals. It took four years to erase the list. But now, four years after Hutchinson left the governor’s office and Sanders assumed it, the list has grown again, this time to more than 2,400.
As one mother from Gentry who’s trying to care for her daughter put it, the whole process is very frustrating.
“I have written Sarah Huckabee Sanders and (Sen.) John Boozman and (Sen) Tom Cotton,” said Laura Hellinga, whose daughter, Landri, just turned 15. “Mostly, I got the same letter back, thanking me for writing.”
Boozman, she said, responded that it wasn’t his area of responsibility. Hellinga said she heard back from Cotton only after she sent several letters. And Sanders has largely ignored her, said Hellinga, who admitted that she sometimes feels very alone.
Landri has a rare and debilitating joint problem, called Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, that locks her joints into one position, either straight or bent. She has very little mobility, spending most of her time in a motorized wheelchair. Hellinga said that otherwise, her daughter is a young woman trying to live a normal life. And Hellinga is trying her best to allow her daughter to be that and live as close to a teenager’s life as possible. But it’s far from easy.
When Landri was born, Hellinga walked away from a career as a national accounts manager for Walmart because she knew she would need to care for her daughter’s every need. Over the years, Landri has had more than 40 surgeries, with doctors trying to stay ahead of growth spurts that affect how well Landri can bend and move.
The stress on the family was too much for Hellinga and her husband, who are now divorced, but she said Landri’s father has been a devoted parent and a good provider.
“She’s a bright, beautiful, intelligent little girl,” Hellinga said. “She doesn’t want the power chair to stop us, but it really does.”
In the early going, caring for Landri meant traveling to Shriners Children’s hospital in Philadelphia every week. They at first tried Arkansas Children’s Hospital, but her condition was beyond what they could handle. Travel, Hellinga said, presented its own special challenges. Because Landri couldn’t fold herself into a plane seat, she had to go by car, which meant frequent stops.
Hellinga said she first applied for Landri to be on the CES waiver in 2022 and had to apply multiple times before being accepted in 2024. She would have applied sooner, but there was no one to care for her in Arkansas, and she said the program wouldn’t pay for her care in Pennsylvania. Now she does get most of her care in Arkansas.
Asked what she would hope for from the waiver program if and when Landri is accepted, she said she has her wish list. A pool membership would be nice, she said, since Landri has her best range of motion in water. A new lift system would also help, Hellinga said, considering that the manual system she has is hard for her to operate. Adaptive tools, she said, “gadgets that would allow her to operate inside the house” would help. “And I’d like for her to learn to drive,” Hellinga said, her voice trembling. “I just want her to be able to do things.”
Just getting on the CES wait list is something of a victory, Hellinga said.
“You have to provide a lot of detail on her condition. It’s not like she’s ever going to grow out of this. But I have a four-inch binder (of medical records) and I don’t know how many times they’ve lost or misplaced it,” she said, referring to the state office that handles the paperwork.
Currently, Landri’s place in line is in the 500-something range, Hellinga said. “But I check all the time, and the last time I emailed them, we’re number 636, so we’re up and down and up and down and nobody knows, and we can’t get any answers because they’re understaffed. Sometimes, we can’t get anyone to even answer the phone.”
Her attempts to get answers from the governor’s office have also failed.
“I just want to talk to the governor, one on one,” she said. “Not a photo-op, just a conversation on what her plan is. What is the plan for these thousands of individuals on this list? I just want to know where this is going and what to expect. So far, I have not gotten those answers.”
Hellinga is not unlike other parents around the state who post on their own social media pages or on the pages of interested groups that have, so far, unsuccessfully pushed for the governor to call a special session to deal with the problem. Hutchinson took action to cut the waitlist during a regular legislative session. The next regular session in Arkansas will not begin until January 2027.
The outcry has, however, not gone unnoticed by at least a few politicians. Rep. Denise Ennett (D-Little Rock) also has a disabled child who was lucky enough to be on the list when Hutchinson cleared it. She said her disabled son is a twin, which has allowed the family to see how he and his sister have developed. The stresses, she said, can be all-consuming. Where the CES program will help her son the most, she said, will be as he transitions into adulthood, although the type of CES care one gets is determined by each person’s disability. Ennett said her son will “always need someone to keep an eye on him,” but she said she hopes the waiver will give him the tools he needs to live as independently as possible.
Because she’s a legislator, Ennett said she is more familiar with the state’s programs. Many others, she said, are clueless.
“We don’t do a good job as a state of informing people about the program,” she said. “Many people don’t know about the CES program. My best advice for parents is to open themselves up and engage with other parents. You may want to retreat and not deal with others, but I promise you, there is strength in numbers, and before long, you will get invaluable information from people who are walking in your shoes.”
Ennett said she had not publicly asked for a special session but that she supports one.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Andrew Collins (D-Little Rock), said he had asked the governor to call a special session to address the waitlist, which would require the state to get federal Medicaid officials to open up more slots so that more people could be let in.
“Of course, that means that the state would have to pay for those slots,” he said. “Right now, the estimate is that it would cost somewhere between $35 (million) and $50 million.”
Collins said it’s important for the state to take action.
“I think how we would respond to that would say a lot about who we are as a state and who we are as a society,” he said.
Both Collins and Ennett were in the Legislature when Hutchinson took action. And as the wait list number climbs, Collins said, “everyone knows we need to do something about it. But we simply don’t get it done.”
He said parents are already faced with enormous challenges in caring for disabled children. “To allow those individuals to be burdened in this way feels morally indefensible,” he said. “You’re telling them they have to spend years on end waiting for help that may never come.
“The waiver program does not solve everything, but it does alleviate some of the burdens that will be there regardless.”
What that looks like varies, depending on an individual’s needs, but can include adaptive equipment, such as customized wheelchairs, bathtub seats, wheelchair ramps and lifts to bathroom modifications and medical supplies that other insurance doesn’t pay for.
Collins said the state’s share of paying for the CES services is about 30%, with the federal government picking up the remainder. He chided Sanders for not acting quickly to address the problem, comparing the needed $50 million or so for CES with the cost of the the state’s LEARNS program, which provides free vouchers to cover private school tuition for families that don’t necessarily need the help at an estimated cost approaching $400 million a year, and tax cuts for the highest earners.
“If it was a priority, it would have been done already,” Collins said. “So I’m very happy that this has become a grassroots effort because that is impossible to ignore. Things like this are important to getting attention.”
Questions about the CES program were sent to the governor’s office in an email but we got no response.